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He said he knew the dog had the identifying chip when he let the dog foe in the supermarket parking lot. >> if i wanted to ensure that no one would have associated the dog with her, i would have killed the dog. there's no way i could do that. >> he was too much of a softy to kill the dog, as he explained it. but poor meredith, ella's owner, never had a chance. >> she was dead from the beginning. because i just told you, once you've done it, you're either going to kill her or get caught. there's no other solution. that sounds cold and cruel, yeah, it was. >> in his unbelievable cold recollectio...

Definitely. >> they now had numerous hilton sightings around where cheryl dunlap vanished. but, despite all the investigative work by multiple sheriff's offices and the fdle, no witness came forward to put him together with cheryl dunlap. the nurse's remains were in such poor condition they told investigators nothing about how she died. but there were thousands of other pieces in the puzzle investigators were trying to solve. hilton's van jammed to the roof with hundreds of items was trucked to the florida department of law enforcement crime lab. >> our crime scene analysts spent day and night...

>> the state honored the deal it made with the killer, no death penalty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. hilton admitted nothing beyond the emerson murder. >> is this the first time you've ever done anything like this before? >> i'll let my attorney answer. >> by now investigators from a half dozen southeastern states as well as fbi profilers were rummaging through hilton's past. by the time he was captured, he wasn't much more than a vagrant in a van but his past was more complex. as an army veteran, hilton earned an associate's degree, and been married three times before the wheels a...

Emerson had wrestled away from gary hilton. now investigators in florida had a theory. >> what was interesting about that knife is, before we knew of mr. hilton, before he had killed ms. emerson and been caught, our analyst in our lab showed us, this is the style -- this is what the knife's going to look like. >> cameras and memory cards were found inside the van. the techie detectives in the fdle computer lab were working overtime trying to unscramble deleted material from the evidence. and deep in their dna lab more than 700 samples were being analyzed in an attempt to find some link between...

The police with his story, it seemed to do the trick. >> within a day or two, he had packed up all of his belongings and moved on. >> put all of his stuff in the van and took off. >> yes. >> john tabor was relieved to see hilton in his rear-view mirror but he was nonetheless puzzled by the change that had come over the man. >> when you're around someone for nearly ten years and it's uneventful, nothing ever happens that suggests a demonic violent personality that apparently materialized somehow. >> tabor had part of the gary hilton picture. a veteran atlanta criminal defense lawyer added more....